Clashes make road travel difficult in Mozambique

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Clashes make road travel difficult in Mozambique

8:20 CAT | 17 Nov 2016

DW / Road in Tete, Mozambique.

A DW Africa correspondent travelling a stretch of the Inhambane-Tete road finds that getting around Mozambique has become dangerous and can only be done with an armed escort.

The escort arrives – an armoured car with six military personnel which positions itself at the head of the column of more than 100 vehicles waiting to travel. But even with an escort, the journey can be dangerous – one traveller told us that he was robbed by armed men.

Proof enough that in Mozambique it is not easy to get from Inhambane to Tete. The cities are less than 900km away from each other and the trip today takes much longer than before because of clashes between government forces and Renamo, the country’s largest opposition party.

Escort

Mosambik (DW/L. da Conceicao) — Vehicles waiting for the escort

It is not possible to make the trip without military protection, and if you miss the last escort of the day, you have to sleep in the car on the road until the next day or find a guesthouse. This happened to us and the driver from Joao Vasco, who we met while waiting for the escort.

Traveller Faizal Abdul tells us a more drastic story about the dangers of the trip. “Two armed men asked me for money and when I said I did not have any, they reacted very badly. The truck was not blocked and fell back and overturned while trying to escape, closing the road. I lost all my documents, and my money was taken away.”

Along the way we see hundreds of burned houses. No-one lives along the route anymore. For drivers and passengers the situation is hopeless. Drivers transporting goods to Malawi are worried, Mussa Cuirassa, a driver works for a company there, says.

“We are from Zimbabwe, Malawi, Johannesburg… . We are all suffering here on the road,” Cuirassa says.

In addition to the dangers, the journey—once a one-day trip—has become expensive. We spent about 4,000 meticais (about 50 euros) on food and drink over three days getting to Tete, quite possibly too much for the local population.

Source: Deutsche Welle